Went to operate on my layout, turned everything on, entered a consist, and nothing except a beep beep beep. So spend almost a day tracing wireing and find nothing wrong. So I test the brain box on a few sections of Unitrack and its fine. I try DC on the layout and overload light goes on. So check wiring again and see nothing. So I take all the cars off the layout and lo and behold everything is now fine. By process of elimination I find the culpert, a boxcar I recently put metal wheels on, however this car had metal trucks and the meter showed a short. Problem solved. I am not sure why the trucks were bad but they were and replacing them solved the problem even with the same metal wheels
Sigh
Hmm, a short in that situation usually means you have a bad wheelset with no insulation. Even with a metal truck, with metal wheels and a metal axle - at least one of the wheels on any given wheelset should be insulated from the axle.
What I think more likely happened, with a metal truck, is you got one wheelset in with the insulated wheel on the left, and one wheelset in with the insulated wheel on the right. Bet there is nothing wrong with the truck at all. In a plastic truck, it won't matter which way the wheelsets are installed, but with a metal truck, it most definitely matters.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Checked the wheels with a meter and no shorts there. So if I use metal trucks I will check everything with a meter. But the problem shut down the whole 20 x 30 foot layout, kind of a quarter test I suppose.
Right, the wheelsets are all good. But you probably put one in with the insulated wheel near the right sideframe (meaning the left sideframe got power from that wheelset) and the other with the insulated wheelset near the left sideframe, meaning the right sideframe got power from that one - dead short.
Nothing is defective - the wheelsets are fine, the metal truck is fine. Think about what I said. Metal wheelsets are often only insulated on one side - that wheel conducts no electricity anywhere else but the wheel itself. The other wheel is attached to the metal axle - so that wheel AND THE AXLE have the same polarity. So long as the 'hot' axle is on the same side for both wheelsets, there's no problem. But if one is in backwards - now the whole metal truck is a path between the left wheel and axle of one wheelset and the right sheel and axle of the other wheelset - there's your short. Check it out again, and look closely at the wheelsets. Most modern ones are insualted at the hub - if you look on the back you can usually see the bushing on the insulated side. Take that metal truck you think is defective and grab two more wheelsets, and make sure the bushing is on the same side for both wheelsets - bet it doesn't short.
That makes sense. That was the only metal truck I had in my freight car collection. I am at the point of getting rid of the under performers so that is a good lesson to learn. I want all metal wheels and to get everything rolling properly. I have used Kadee wheels, and probably need to get better trucks. Thankfully I have maybe 75 cars so it is not too daunting a task.
Hey, nice to know I'm not the only one that did that........
Five years ago I put Intermountain wheel sets on all my cars, including some Ulrich metal hoppers with sprung metal trucks. The cars were together on a staging track and didn't cause a problem until months later (I was doing scenery in the interim) when I moved them.
I won't lie, it took a long time before I narrowed it down to those metal trucks - which ultimately were sold on Ebay.
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
It's easy to do. One reason for metal wheels with plastic axles - no issue!
CGW121:
You just made me aware of something that had never occurred to me before. I only have a few metal trucks but almost all my rolling stock has InterMountain wheel sets. I have never had the chance to run my freight cars on powered track since I don't have a layout yet.
Time to do some testing!
Thanks
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Intermountain wheelsets are ones you can definitely tell the insulated wheel if you look at the backs. The insulating bushing is usually visible - you lay a surface mount resistor across this diagonally to make resistor wheelsets from IM wheels. The picture for the product at Modeltrainstuff has the contrast turned down a bit too far but you can see the insulator on the back of the wheel that's visible. The clearest picture a quick scan turned up ended up being Exactrail's wheelsets, the picture has half of them turned one way and half the other way and you can see the difference between the wheel with the insulator and the one without.
there is 1 point that was not brought up and yes i did not look over all responses and that is the quality of the wheels. I think reaslistically at where things are produced like china etc. the people in these countries usually are told where to work and recieve most things from the government in return for there work. Do you think if it was you that you would care then what the material and production tolerances were and be exact about them i doubt it. china and these countries produce cheaply because they control overhead and show bigger profits and pass this along to corporations to secure there bread and butter for there economy.
I've never had a bad wheeset it many many dozens of Proto 2000 wheelsets, which are made in China. All my cars, except for a few that needed different axle lengths or already had metal wheels, are P2K wheels. Most of the people at the club use Intermountain which I'm pretty sure are made in the USA. Also with no problems that I've heard of.
I doubt quality of wheels is an issue here. The OP used the exact same wheelsets, but in a plastic truck, and everything was fine. His metal truck is most likely not defective.